How to Judge a Contest: A Complete Guide

By: Anna Tomakh
Date: Feb 14, 2020
Comment: 0
Category: Awards Management

Hey there, event planner! What is that first thing that comes into the mind, when you hear the word CONTEST or AWARD? A gold plated trophy, cash amount, a prize or something else to reward all the efforts you made to win the event?

It does not matter whether they win a cash prize or got something useful or maybe a cool trip to an exotic place, contests are all about recognition, fame, and publicity. In this blog post, we have covered everything about contests, their importance, the ways to judge a contest and how to pick judges besides discussing many more things.

What is a contest?

Contests are a great way to engage customers and fans for your products or services. A contest is an event in which people compete for supremacy in a sport, other activity or in quality.

The main purpose of contests is to advertise a call to action which asks the fans, followers, and customers to create a piece of content which can be anything — right from asking a simple or complex question, to taking a photo or video to scribble down an essay or a poem.

The content that is created by followers and customers leaves an invaluable impact on the brand. Not only do contests let you gain a thoughtful insight into the customer engagement and marketing research analysis but they also make sure that the content can be used later in other marketing efforts if it is used and released properly.

The most important point of all is that a contest lets brands connect and build deeper relationships with the customers. A contest is an amazing way to gauge the time fans are ready to invest to engage with your content, product and sometimes the website. A brand or a contest organizer should make sure that they present a prize at the end of the promotion equivalent to the amount of effort the fans invested at the end of the contest.

Why organize an awards contest?

It does not matter whether you are an event organizer, an Association or a media outlet, if you want to attract lots of people towards your brand, you would most likely be interested in starting a contest. Let us put your mind at ease — you should totally do so! Without a doubt, organizing a contest is a tough job but the kind of benefits it can get for your business is absolutely amazing. Aso, so it is much easier to organize one when you have all the right information to guide you to success at your hands.

Everybody loves awards

Oh yes, this one is absolutely true! one of the main reasons why contests and competitions attract so much buzz is because everybody loves to participate in them. Companies understand the strategic value of organizing a contest and perceive it as a way of becoming more competitive in the throat-cutting business competition. When a person wins a contest, it impacts the brand in various ways –

Recognition – A contest can help a brand or a company gain lots of recognition in its field and positively affect the growth of the same.
Credibility – For instance, if a company has been continuously innovating its products and services, and innovation award can get them lots of credibilities, something that any brand eyes for.
Public relations – When a company organizes a contest, and it gains a lot of traction, it is able to form a deeper relationship with the public because of its immense popularity.
Increased engagement – Whenever a contest is is held, people want to participate in it. If the brand is regular with organizing contests, people start looking forward to the next contest right after this one finishes.

New business leads and contacts

So you have been running a successful contest. Your database is full of existing leads and contacts and you tried to get in touch with them before you run the contest. After gaining the attention and fame that your contest deserves, you will be surprised at the high potential it had to get new business opportunities, leads, and contacts for your brand.

Extra publicity for your organization

It is not that you will get instant free publicity because you are organizing a competition. But contest competitions are the darling of any industry that has the tendency to generate more internet buzz, media coverage, likes, shares and comments on social media platforms around your brand. Yes, it is way more exciting than it sounds.

New partnerships within your industry, maybe other industries as well

Not just people but brands too feel very fascinated by contests. So there is a great potential for you to draw the attention for new media partnerships, the possibility to work with companies you once thought were difficult to approach.

A new income channel

While everything is not just about money but everything at the end of the day revolves around money! Contests will make people want to buy your brand services and products, engage more around them and make them feel that investing their time and money is worth their time and effort. So, do not just pretend that contests are not a “big” breakthrough for your business.

Challenges you face when judging your contest.

While pulling through a contest may not be quite a challenge but judging it can be quite tiresome. The reason? Everybody has different contest judging criteria and no two people are able to agree on the same parameters to assess an entry. While there are a lot of challenges that one can face while judging a contest, below, we have listed some criteria for judging a contest in an uncomplicated manner.

The rules of the contest are not in line with the goals of what the sponsor/organiser wants to attain through it. If the rules of the contest have not been discussed with the sponsor, there may be a conflict around the specifications that a judge looking at versus what he should actually be looking for.

The rate of interest and all the information that a contest wants to look at is not clear to the organizers and the jury of judges. If this happens, the sponsor might want to take the contest in a different direction versus the kind of direction it is actually going towards. There needs to be absolute clarity around what is expected out of the contest.
Judging a contest manually can be quite tiresome! Writing the score of each entry, sorting them out later and then being able to finally announce the winner is too much work and involves wastage of resources such as paper and requires the judges to invest lots of time. If the award program organisers do not provide the jury or judge with a proper judging software, or in case the software interface is not user-friendly, there is not much that can be done. With limited functions in most of the judging software, things can get out of control. Try out the exclusive judging management software by Judgify that lets you build your awards judging management toolkit.
The judging criteria are more inclined towards the judges than revolving around the audience. A good judging criterion is the one which emphasizes on the audience rather than anything else. A contest is for the people, to attract them and for them to take notice of your brand.

Creating a judging criteria.

There is no single criterion that can fit to create judging criteria. A lot of skills and efforts are put by each and every competitor to win the contest, so in a similar manner, a lot of thoughts and ideas go behind creating good judgment criteria. Various judging criteria yardsticks are listed below.

Distribute the judging criteria equally and in a way that it has an equal emphasis on the audience.
Talk to the sponsor and set the rules o the contest in line with his or her goals.
The basis on which each and every entry in the contest will be judged should be stated absolutely clearly.
The information, the objective and the kind of ROI the brand is looking up at achieving should be clear.
Efforts should be made to place the contest in the overall marketing strategy in the social media and /or advertising plan so that it comes out to be a success.
Look at the kind of contests, activities, and different kinds of content that the competitive brands have been putting up on their social media platforms to gauge what worked the best for them to promote their brand in the past.
What is the amount of percentage that sponsors would be ready to give out to each criterion has to be well thought of. It should be relative to the kind of promotion that a brand is seeking.

How to pick & invite judges.

Setting up the entire contest process is still easy but selecting judges and sending them an invitation to attend the contest is not the same. A judge is supposed to keep a close watch on the entire process of the contest so that everything happens smoothly, he or she is able to analyze the entries well and select the winner in the end. Ideally, a judge should be selected on the basis of his or her industry experience and should belong to the same industry around which the contest is being run.

It is only after you have finalized on who will be judging the contest that you will be able to come up with a winner. But to do so, you will have to invite them to judge the contest. The times have changed and so have the means of sending out a formal invitation to judge a contest

— telephone and meeting on a one on one basis have been taken over by email templates, printed invitation card and by using event judging module.

That is all that you need to do! Draft an email, send out an invitation letter and send it across to the potential judges for your contest. The only word of caution here is that you must remember that your email will be the most important way of communicating with your prospective judge. So try to make it as simple as possible while maintaining a crisp tone regarding everything the contest is about, the date(s) it is happening on and what are your expectations from your judges.

How to prepare the judges.

Why there is not much preparation for the judges, there are quite a few points that you must remember while inviting your judges to play their part.

The judges should be asked to get familiarized with the evaluation criteria, scoring rubric and any other points that the sponsors think would be necessary.
If the judge is supposed to attend the event, they must be seated separately from the rest of the audience as they must not be distracted or influenced. The judges should not be allowed to interact with the audience or to participants until the contest is over
If your contest involves more than one judge, the judges should not talk among themselves about their scores and each one of them should do the scoring independently. In case the scoring is being done manually, the evaluation sheets should be turned in immediately. If the contest is being run online, the scoresheet filled by the judges should only be assessed by the organizer or sponsors.
The charges should be directed to not discuss any face of the contest or their judging methods and scores with the contestants or other jury members except the contest moderator, following the contest.
The judges should not be permitted to spill any information about the scorecards with anyone, who so ever to maintain the secrecy.

How to judge?

Being the organizer of the contest, nobody expects you to be able to explain to a judge how to select a winner out of all the entries! But you can always help by explaining a few things to them. Remember to make sure that before they begin to judge entries, he or she should go through the terms and conditions, and various rules that govern the contest in a thorough way. Whatever inputs are being provided by a judge, they form the essential part of running successful contests in a fair manner. Listed below are the most important points which explain the best way to judge a contest –

Understanding the judgment criteria: It is very important to understand the judging criteria so that the people who are keeping an eye on the entries are able to make a clear and fair decision about how an entry is supposed to be rated.
Consistency in judgment: The judgment should be done with consistency. There should not be any pitfalls in the criteria of judging an entry.
Stick to the rules: Adhering to the rules and terms and conditions of the contest while submitting the judgment that has been made by the judge or jury.
Effectiveness should be the prime focus: Shifting the prime focus on “Is this entry effective, How can it benefit the brand? Does it have the potential to attract attention on social media?”
Judging in an absolutely unbiased manner: As a judge, a close watch must be kept on the fact whether the objective of the contest is been fulfilled or not. Let go of any personal opinions while giving a score to entry.

Judging Process.

While there are different kinds of competitions and contests that keep happening, we have listed future general parameters that can prove to be useful in the judging process.

A fresh point of view: Copying an idea is easy but coming up with something original and fresh is a challenge. While judging an entry, special attention should be made towards the point of view of the entry.
Creativity and Originality: One of the most important points of all, an entry should be two things — creative and original. A creative and original idea grab attention in ways you would never have thought of!
Grammar and writing style: If the contest involves writing down something about the product, service or brand, the grammar and writing style must be checked to ensure that only the best entry wins.
The clarity in the thought process: If a judge likes an entry, they must ask themselves this question — did the contestant have clarity in his or her thoughts while taking part in this contest? Will a third person be able to understand what the contestant is trying to imply here?
Visual appeal: Each one of us is a Netizen and we all know the importance of something that is visually appealing, for it has the potential to attract attention. Who knows, it could get viral on the internet and spread brand awareness beyond what you or the sponsors had thought!
Compelling idea: Let us assume that you ran a photo or a video contest. How would you judge the entry? Visual appeal and quality are a few parameters but most importantly, is the idea compelling enough? If the person judging the entry were to think from a third person’s point of view, would they be impressed?
Brand recall ability: If we have not already stressed enough on the need for brand awareness, here is just another gentle reminder. Brand recall ability is a must when it comes to the judgment process. The entry should be in line with the brand values. Remember to focus on the fact that brand recall is the best way to reach millions of people and strike a chord in their hearts and minds.
Adherence to the theme: Applicable only if your contest was based on a theme, check if the entry sticks to the theme as stated in the terms and conditions of the contest.

Checklist.

There are lots of checklists such as one for making sure if everything is in place, one for choosing the judges and so on. In this section, we shall be discussing all the points you need to bear in mind while organising a judging process. You will need to have a thorough understanding of what exactly you wish to achieve by running a contest. Do you want to –

Add to the number of fans and loyal customers for your brand?
Increase your presence on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter?
Grow the sales of your brand by giving out coupons and incentives?
Be in a position to add to your email lead database?
Gain attraction and attention for your new or soon to be launched product?
Or do all of the above?

After you are done with thinking about what you want to achieve by running the contest following are the points that you must consider while attracting entries for your contest.

What are all the things that you would be looking at in an ideal contest entry?
What exactly do you want your contestant to be interested in while rooting for your contest?

And here is the final leg! When you are judging a contestant entry, you should be able to evaluate them on the basis of –

If the entry is creative and original?
Does the entry fulfill all the terms and conditions of the contest that you stated in the T&C section?
Is the entry impactful and does it represent your brand?
If it represents and fulfills everything that you were looking at as an entry for your contest?
If a particular entry wins, will it be able to make an impression around your brand?

Sounds like too much a task? It is but means nothing as far as running a successful contest is concerned.

Reasons to use additional tools for contest.

Running a contest and then announcing a winner if not easy as it seems. The different processes and steps involved in running a contest can make you miss out on a few important things. Hence we suggest that you should go digital, use contents management software and make use of other additional tools for ensuring that everything runs perfectly. Listed below are a few reasons why you should move your judgment process to a virtual space –

Independence: Online assessment and scoring mean that you can do so by setting at any place at any given point in time. As an organizer, you will not have to depend on this schedule of somebody else and end up wasting time.
Introvert focus: When you announce the results in an offline mode, you have to read them out loud as per the scores in front of other people. This, at times, accounts for tension and stressful atmosphere. The better way is to go introvert do some online judging!
Centralized data storing: When you choose to judge online, you are on the winning side! You can not miss out on a single score report as the online scoring data gets stored on the cloud and in turn, you save yourself and the judges a whole lot of trouble.
Simply makes everything easier: If there is a high profile contest happening, the judges, entrants and you as an organizer can be sure that going digital will keep all the data of the contestants safe.
Say NO to lengthy and tiring administrative procedures: The inconvenient manual reward management procedures involved heavy paperwork. By going digital, you can easily forget the waiting time and feeling complex forms because everything is just a click away when it comes to software.
Creates a better organizational structure: Gone are the days when organizing contest management processes was a tiresome process. With countless applicant entries, there are chances that something will go wrong. When you choose to go digital, the overall process flow improves drastically.
Customize the judging format: You can choose your approach in an online judgment system. You can create your own unique formats in the form of a number range or any other criteria — whichever suits your contest. When the work for judges becomes so easy, they will want to be associated with you over and over again
Improves the quality and quantity of applications: When you have an efficient award management software at your disposal, you can be sure that you almost own a magic wand. You can filter out a wide range of qualitative submissions almost instantly. You can also review and monitor all the information and entries with utmost is while saving your valuable time.
Easier accessibility to entrants and judges: When you use management software, you do not have to deal with the back and forth of manual postal submissions or bulky emails. The participating contestants and judges can get over with their tasks quickly by simply logging in, feeding in all the required information and letting the software do its work. It can sort the submissions, store details, monitor process and do the scoring procedures on your behalf while also providing a payment gateway if required.
Accurate scoring, no human error: By using different software, the chances of human error in terms of scoring get reduced to almost nil. The manual calculations can go wrong but the software does not really make mistakes ensuring that you can rely on them and can get accurate results when it comes to judging systems.

Simplifying and making use of digital solutions is gold! Not only does it simplify the process but it also allows the tracking changes and customizes processes as per your requirement. The centralized database enables you to keep all the necessary information in a single place.

Judging management tools.

Need assistance with setting up the right judgment criteria for your upcoming contest? In a bid to make your contest a dynamic one, we suggest that you should get in touch with our team at Judgify and seek all the help that you need.

An end to end automated award management software system, Judgify makes the entire process of judging a contest absolutely effortless for you. With a centralized submission dashboard, you can be sure that judging the contest will not require much effort from your end. Not only will the judges be able to save time, but as a sponsor or organizer, you too will be able to save on money and energy. With the help of Judgify’s management tools and contest judging app, you will be able to filter out any irrelevant entries, take control of the rules of submission and the judges will be able to make a decision very quickly and in a fair manner.

Do you need help in organizing a contest for your brand or perhaps a client? Are you unsure about selecting an ideal judge for the upcoming contest and have limited knowledge about the management tools used for judging a contest? At Judgify, we have experts who can help you figure out everything — right from creating judging criteria to picking and inviting the right judges, to assist you to collate the checklist for the contest. Get in touch with our team right now!

At Judgify, we have A to Z management solutions for brands to make use of. These end to end technology solutions are sure to make organizing a contest, judging it and helping your brand become a massive success a cakewalk.

Ready to run a contest?

Now that you know everything it takes to run a successful and engaging contest event, and how to judge a contest, we suggest that you should organize one as soon as possible. Contests are really worth the effort and are sure to repay the sponsor in a handsome manner. Besides being fun, they generate lots of buzz and awareness while increasing the potential sales of the brand. When you run a contest in the right manner, not only will you end up engaging and expanding your audience, but you will also be able to generate lots of new content that can inspire the future contests and content for your organization. Throughout the contest make sure that you are judging criteria that are set in place. Do you have more tips for running a successful contest? Share them in the comments section below.